I don't have a vacuum seal but I wrap each piece in cling wrap, then put in gallon slide lock freezer bags, I've kept venison a year or two and fish and squirrel 2-3years and never had any freezer burn.works great for me.

Thanks

Like your new profile pic...now, back to the OP!

Easier, faster and cleaner at the time and later. Produce bag from the grocery. A roll has thousands, is usually super cheap if not free, they will contain blood as it thaws(paper wrapped) and they’re food grade. Drop in the meat to a corner, moosh out the air, spin, fold the spun tail under and either wrap or ziplock it.

If you can, look into chamber machines. We saved a couple years to get one and couldn’t be happier. Bags are cheap and very tough. It will blow any vacuum machine out of the water. VacMaster, LEM, Weston, all have good machines. We use the crap out of ours, go through a case of 1000 bags in about a year and a half to two years.



Owl

I age my deer 7-10 days skin on. How do you prevent the outer layers of meat from drying out if you skin before aging, humidity control in your cooler?

I've eaten both aged and not aged venison in the same week. Both were my deer, both were fat doe. There is definitely an improvement in texture (more tender with aged) and to a lesser degree taste.

I vacuum-seal all my venison and venison products (sausage, scrapple) and also all my other game meat and caught fish. IMO, the low fat content in wild game it more susceptible to freezer burn than beef or pork and vacuum-sealing helps a great deal with that.

hang mine from tree out of sun prefer 5 days.,skin on when cool. No bears here.

Lugnut asks, How do you prevent the outer layers of meat from drying out if you skin before aging,

Wrap with cheese cloth.

Interesting. seems like extra work though, Why not just leave the skin on and skip the cheesecloth wrap?

We use to leave the hide on, and hang in the barn/garage for 2 weeks. It's not cold enough to do that anymore. Now I'll peel them out and quarter them up and leave on ice with salt (drained daily) for 10-14 days.

Many times the animal is frozen while hanging.
I do prefer skin on aging.
I've been through this topic on here and was convinced I am wrong lol.
Domestic meat is protected by fat, wild not so much.

That rind you get when you leave one hang is good dog feed. Its just dried meat. Cut it up
In small pieces its ok in soup if you want to eat it. I let mine hang. Depends on weather but I prefer a week. Kill a big buck and with a little aging it is still pretty tender and good tasting. Roast cut off the ham and cooked in dry onion soup and condensed mushroom soup will fall apart. If your going to just grind everything but the back strap it doesnt really matter.

If you are just grinding most of the meat, you are wasting your time aging it.

Yeah we've had that issue at camp in years past. Nighttime temps in the single digits and daytime highs in the teens. Went out to skin a deer shot earlier in the week and tapped my knife off it. Sounded like I was tapping on a rock (dink, dink). It was like trying to skin a Volkswagen.

Lesson learned. I will skin them early if there's a chance of them freezing hard.

It's wasted meat.

Not in my world its not wasted. Guts are edible but how many of you eat the guts? What about kidneys tongue and testicles? Meat on the head? Everything but the hair antlers bones teeth and hooves are edible. So lets not talk about “wasting”.

And it's a lot of extra, unnecessary work carving off all that dried meat.

Dogs can have the testicles, tongue and head meat. I'll eat the rest

Often said if I had a caribou killed and God came down and said sorry I gotta take this for the poor people but seeing how you are such a nice guy you can have one pound then I would take the tongue. And if God said I could have a little more I would run my pocket knife thru the easy cut place on either side of the brisket and take that too.

Hanging an animal - learn how to age by the jawbone and no need to hang yearlings and 2 year olds. We don't bother much regardless.

At our hunt camp, we skin while still warm , or the same day. Bone everything out , while hanging on the hook .. Similar , to gutless method. Store cuts, in cooler, till end of week ,then process at camp. We have a grinder,and zip lock bags with us.They are nice to skin and process. This eliminates frozen or if too warm , tainted meat. This way everyone gets their meat to take home, and they are there to help with the processing. Bones and waste goes back , to the bush.. Works for us old243